How I Recovered From A Broken Brain
A few weeks ago, I realized my brain was broken.
It started with my absentee father. He wasn't a bad dad, just a divorced dad who wasn't around much.
By default, I was raised 99% of the time by a nurturing and attentive mother. She was wonderful in all the ways, and I learned from the inside out how to be wonderful like her.
So, when the time came to raise my own kids, I mom'd the hell out of them. I was an awesome mom-dad, but the traditional (fine, gender stereotypical) fatherly role was largely missing from my toolbox.
Ironically, the solution was my wife. I'll get to that in a minute. First, a quick super-simple breakdown of how brains work.
Our brains are formed through interaction with our environment.
During development your brain has essentially three things that can happen; it gets:
-> good information
-> bad information
-> no information
That input informs - literally forms into the child - the neural structures for success (or lack thereof).
Here's a fun example of how information at a critical stage affects development: if an in utero child interacts with a nutritional environment that's lacking in nutrients (Mom isn't getting enough food), as happened with fetuses during the well-studied Dutch Hunger when Nazi's restricted food to the Netherlands - the infant is born with what are called "thrifty genes," genes expressly designed to maximize use of nutrients to best win in an environment with minimal food sources.
As you can see, Nature designed an extremely efficient system.
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However, it has built-in expectations that the information it's getting is good and complete. When it's not, that's when things get weird.
Following the three broad types of input our brain can get, our brain ends up, respectively:
good information -> well-formed
bad information -> ill-formed
no information -> unformed
In my case, my "fathering" input had been lacking, so my brain was essentially "unformed" in that domain. I didn't have the tools necessary, because I simply had never been given a model for it.
Enter my wife. Raised with strong yes/no boundaries and the will to immediately and indelibly put said boundaries in place with our children, I was exposed again and again to behaviors that had been outside of my awareness and, more importantly, my ability to effectively implement with my kids.
Thankfully, our brains are "plastic," which is a way of saying, they like to learn. So my brain did what brains do when they're open to learning - it learned.
Eventually, all the exposure to how to set boundaries turned into behaviors, and at long last I updated my boundary game.
Resolving these types of issues is the kind of work I do day-in and day-out with clients, so it's fun to experience from the inside out.
How about you?
What elements are missing or malfunctioning in your brain and behavior?
Are they ill-formed or just unformed?
Senior Pre Sales Solutions Partner @ Orange Business | Artificial Intelligence | Customer Success | Corporate Strategy
7 个月This is interesting stuff Devon. Have you done any posts on the impact of depression and anxiety on the brain?
Devon White What strategies have you found most effective for maintaining brain health and personal growth?
Parent, shift captain/trainer 988 crisis line
8 个月Great distinctions between Ill formed and un formed. A needed clarification. In this regard your brain is not broken, as fun as that is to say, as much as it was denied some core programming. I can certainly relate, and found a near identical solution. I learned from Bianca! And continue to learn. In so many ways our roles have Reversed over the course of our lives together but, as we grow in our relationship, we also grow as individuals. The children also have this same orbit, as they grow we grow. For example, As I want to allow space for my children to grow without gender norms and without subconsciously reinforcing toxic behaviors and attitudes, I have found myself practicing open spaces for expression and play. In the act of this I find freedom in this for them, but also for myself. My sense of identity stops sounding like father, more like parent. And that waves over me, like an upgrade, in the long run making up for that initial lack. Best!
Evolving applied neurotechnologies for human performance and wellness
8 个月Minds - biological devices for preserving generational echoes.
I help you build & protect wealth. || Founder, Daner Wealth || CFP? || Husband & Father
8 个月Very thought provoking article. Love the way you broke things down in plain English and gave me a better understanding of concepts I have read about before but never in such a straight forward manner.